A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 Part 72

Contrast this n.o.ble sentiment of Dr. McLaughlin, though a Canadian-born subject and supporter of the Roman Catholic faith in the country, with that of his successor, Sir James Douglas, who refused supplies to punish the murderers and protect the American settlements, he having been an officer under the provisional government, and taken an oath to protect and defend it.

Did it conflict with his duties as a British subject? The reason a.s.signed by him for his refusal was, "_the stringent rules laid down for his government by the home company_," which the n.o.ble old Canadian said he would resign his position sooner than obey.

It is not difficult to see that Oregon, during the existence of the provisional government, was a country possessing peculiarly interesting relations to the two nations who were claiming its allegiance and sovereignty. Had the Hudson's Bay Company been true to its own country, and encouraged the settlement of loyal British subjects in it, there is no question but, with the facilities and capital at its command, it could have secured the country before an American settlement could have acquired any strength in it. The same was the case with California. One or two ships a year from 1835 to 1840, or even 1846, leaving out the Roman and Jesuit missionaries, could have brought substantial English families with their English chaplains, and formed their colonies and absorbed the American missionary settlements in it, and no one would have questioned their right, or attempted to defeat them; but the 7,000 or more of clear profits in the fur trade, and native a.s.sociations, were too strong. The country becomes valuable in its estimation, as others have improved and developed its wealth. The natives with the furs of the country were the only source of wealth to it, and especially to the home company in London. If the least possible credit is due to it from any source, it is for its stupidity and ignorance as to the real value of the country, of which no one can give a true history without developing the avaricious character and degrading influences and proceedings of that company; for it had, as we remarked at the commencement of our history, and as every one knows, the absolute control of it up to the organization of the provisional government in 1843. Those influences were active and in full operation up to 1842, when it was discovered, by Dr. Whitman and a few others, that the whole country was about to pa.s.s into the hands of the English, as was a.s.serted by the over-zealous priest at Wallawalla: "_The country is ours! America is too late! They may now whistle._" An American heard, and to hear with him was to act. "_If the Board dismisses me, I will do what I can to save Oregon to my country_," was his remark to us, as he gave his hand and mounted his horse, to see what could be done at Washington. The result of that trip was the delay of the boundary question and an immigration and settlement, that no Hudson's Bay and Jesuit exterminating combinations have been able to overcome or drive from the country.

CHAPTER LXV.

Description of the face of the country.--Agricultural and mining productions.--Timber.--The Wallamet.--Columbia.--Dalles.--Upper Columbia.--Mountains.--Rivers.--Mineral wealth.--Climate.--The Northern Pacific Railroad.--Conclusion.

Thus far I have confined myself to the history of the Hudson's Bay Company, the early settlement of the country, its public men, the provisional government, adverse influence, and the American and Jesuit missions. We will now proceed to describe its geographical and physical position and value.

Previous to the treaty of 1846, all that portion of country lying south of the Russian possessions, west of the Rocky Mountains, and north of California, was called Oregon. By that treaty the 49th parallel was const.i.tuted the boundary line between the United States and the British possessions.

In the act of Congress pa.s.sed August 14, 1848, the boundaries were thus defined: "All that part of the territory of the United States which lies west of the summit of the Rocky Mountains, north of the 42d degree of north lat.i.tude, known as the Territory of Oregon, shall be organized into, and const.i.tute a temporary government, by the name of The Territory of Oregon." Unfortunately, though our national Congress contained many n.o.ble, intelligent, and talented men, none of them knew any thing about the country they were defining as Oregon Territory.

Thomas H. Benton, about this time, made his famous Oregon speech. In it he declared that all north of the 49th parallel of lat.i.tude was only fit for the poorest and most meager animal existence; that it was the "derelict of all nations," not fit for the subsistence of civilized man.

This impression of Mr. Benton was received from high British--and no doubt he thought the most correct and reliable--authority. In fact, in the mind of this, and many other of our statesmen, the entire territory was of but little value. It is scarcely necessary to say whence this impression arose, and for what purpose it was so persistently kept before the minds of our most eminent statesmen. The immense fur trade of the country, carried on at a nominal expense, was too profitable to allow the truth to be told, or an experiment to be made, to show the value of the soil, or the amount or variety of its productions. The soil, like the furs and the natives, must be misrepresented, neglected, and slandered, that it may yield its silent income to avarice and idleness.

The American missionary arrives in the country, and is a.s.sured by the Hudson's Bay Company that but a very small portion of the country is susceptible of cultivation; that no extensive settlements can ever be formed in it. These statements are made by men who have spent their lives in the country, and say they have tested the qualities of the soil faithfully, and found it to be unproductive. The missionaries partially believe these statements, and communicate to their friends in the east their doubts as to the extent and richness of the arable land in the country. In the mean time they must provide for their own subsistence.

The Missionary Boards that sent them out are not able to pay the prices demanded for a continual supply of such food as can be raised in the country. This they knew and were prepared for it, and at once commenced to experiment upon the soil for themselves. Their first effort astonishes and delights them. Instead of a hard, barren, unproductive soil, as they had been told, it proves to be a light rich clay loam all through the Wallamet Valley, and in the interior, a dark, mellow, inexhaustible alkali soil, of the richest kind, and, when properly cultivated, very productive.

The missionary experiments are continued and extended. They soon begin to send glowing accounts to their friends of the richness of the valleys of Oregon--eight hundred bushels of potatoes, or from thirty to sixty bushels of wheat, to the acre. The American trappers and hunters gather into the Wallamet Valley, around the Methodist Mission. The Canadian-French, British subjects, who have become worn out and unprofitable to the company, are permitted to locate in the same valley, but, with the clumsy and imperfect farming implements furnished them, and their ignorance of farming, they were not able to accomplish much, and are still referred to, as proof of the worthlessness of the country.

The American settler comes in, and proves the truth of the missionaries'

large farming stories, and finds that he can do, with two yoke of oxen, what it required six to do in the Mississippi Valley--his labor producing double pay. He is more than satisfied--he is delighted--with the soil, the climate, and country, and reports his success to his friends.

By this time a few peaches and apples have been produced outside the inclosures and garden of Fort Vancouver, which convinces the American settler that fruit can be produced in Oregon; and soon we find every known variety to be profitably cultivated.

_Timber._--The fir, spruce, and hemlock are superabundant, all along the coast range, from California to Puget Sound. The fir, pine, oak, ash, and maple are abundant in the valleys of the Wallamet and Cowlitz, and on the western slope of the Cascade range of mountains; there is also an abundance of pine, fir, oak, and maple on the eastern slope.

The Wallamet Valley is from forty to sixty miles wide, and one hundred and eighty long. It has less timber land than fine level prairie; through which winds with its tributaries the beautiful Wallamet, skirted all along its banks and level bottoms with cotton-wood, ash, alder, oak, fir, yellow pine, yew, and soft maple, with a small amount of cedar.

This river has its source in the Umpqua Mountains; and its tributaries in the Coast and Cascade ranges,--the main river running north, or west of north, till it joins the majestic Columbia. Its meandering streams, and valleys composed mainly of prairie interspersed with groves of oak, pine, fir, and cotton-wood, make up a scenery which for beauty and loveliness can not be surpa.s.sed. The Cascade range on the east is dotted, at intervals of from a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles apart, with towering, snow-capped mountains from 15,000 to 18,600 feet high, and is cut at right angles, midway between the California Mountains on the south, and Mount Baker on the north, by the great river of Oregon, the n.o.ble Columbia, which forces its resistless current over its rocky bed, till it finds its way to the ocean.

Ascending this river from the ocean, for sixty miles, to the mouth of the Cowlitz, we find it lined on either bank with lofty and dense forests of spruce, hemlock, cedar, and fir, with scarcely a sign of prairie; from, this up, the timber is interspersed with prairie, till we enter the Cascade Mountains, one hundred and twenty-five miles from the ocean, and ten below the Cascade portage, which is five miles long,--now made by railroad; thence to the Dalles is thirty-eight miles, making fifty miles of the roughest and grandest river and mountain scenery on our continent.

Old ocean in its mightiest heavings is but a placid lake, when compared with this fifty-five miles of mountain roughness, grandeur, and sublimity, from various points of which may be seen Mounts Baker, Rainier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood, and Jefferson, with others of less note, all raising their lofty heads above the regions of perpetual snow.

Prominent among them stands Mount Hood, about thirty miles south of the Columbia, towering to the height of 18,600 feet, with his everlasting white cap on, and overlooking the lovely valleys of the Wallamet to the south and west; the Columbia and Cowlitz to the west and north; and the great upper basin of the Columbia to the northeast, east, and southeast.

From the Dalles we ascend this mighty river fourteen miles by rail, where the water has worn its crooked course amid solid basaltic rocks to unknown depths, not exceeding a hundred and fifty feet in width, causing the river, in discharging its annual floods, to rise at this point over eighty feet in perpendicular height.

At the end of the railroad the steamboat receives the traveler, when, as he ascends the river, the land on either side diminishes in height, till he reaches Castle Rock; seventy-one miles above the Dalles. This is a lone pile of basaltic rocks having the appearance of an old castle in the midst of a great plain to the east, south, and west of it.

A large portion of this plain, lying along the river, is of course gravel and sand, dry, and comparatively barren; yet producing the artemisia, sage, and a luxurious growth of wild mustard in the early spring; with but little gra.s.s, and abundance of the low sunflower.

The lands back from the river are high rolling prairie, covered with rich bunch gra.s.s, having a light soil composed of pulverized basaltic sandstone.

This soil, to the eye of the careless observer, though it is thickly set with the bunch gra.s.s, generally appears barren and worthless; yet, with irrigation, or with winter grains, or gra.s.ses adapted to the soil, it can not be exhausted.

Twenty-five miles above Castle Rock stands the thriving little town of Umatilla, at the mouth of the river of the same name, and nine miles above is Windmill Rock. In ascending the river fifteen miles from this place, the land on either side rises to some fifteen hundred feet above the level of the river which occupies the entire bottom from rocks to rocks on either side; when the land suddenly drops from this high plain which extends from the Blue Mountains on the east to the Cascade range on the west, forming, as it were, a great inland dam across the Columbia River, fifteen hundred feet high at the place where the river has broken through the dam. As you pa.s.s out of this gap, in looking to the north and east, the eye rests upon another vast, high, rolling plain, in the southeastern part of which lies the beautiful valley of the Wallawalla.

At the upper or eastern end was situated the Whitman or Cayuse Mission.

Some six miles above is the flourishing town of Wallawalla. The most of this vast, high, rolling plain, and especially the valleys, have more or less of alkali soil; the high plains are similar to those we have just pa.s.sed,--dest.i.tute of all kinds of timber, except at the foot of the mountains, and small patches of willow and cotton-wood, in some little nook or corner, near some spring or stream.

Imagine Wallawalla a little east of the center of a great plain one hundred miles wide, east and west, one hundred and eighty long, north and south, situated just inside of this great mountain dam we have described; with the majestic Cascade range of mountains on the west, the Blue Mountains on the east, and this vast open plain covered with bunch gra.s.s, and no tree in sight, except upon the mountains; you can then form some idea of the middle Columbia plains. Ascending to the north one hundred miles, over the same high rolling plains, you begin to find the yellow pine and larch; not in dense forests, but scattering trees, the ground beneath being covered with a species of coa.r.s.e, wild gra.s.s. These woods form a delightful change to the traveler after riding for days beneath the scorching rays of a summer sun. As you near the forty-ninth parallel, the timber increases in size, quant.i.ty, and quality. The soil is light, and, when the frosts of winter give place to the sleet and rain of early spring, forms a soft, deep mud, till the ground becomes settled, which is generally about the first of May; then all this vast country is in full bloom, with its myriads of beautiful wild flowers.

The northern portion of Oregon, now Washington Territory, is beautifully interspersed with timber and prairie, in good proportions, and has a rich clay soil.

The whole country abounds in trap-rock and granite, singularly mingled with basalt. Near the mouth of Spokan River is found a splendid variety of marble; some sections of it are of a pure white, while others are beautifully clouded with blue, brown, and green. The face of the country is not so uneven as that further south.

Some sixty miles south of the forty-ninth parallel, we come to the mouth of the Okanagon River, which is the outlet of a chain of lakes in British Columbia, from which it takes its name; it has an extensive and rich valley for settlement.

At Colville, in the vicinity of the Kettle Falls, on the Columbia, are a United States military post, the Hudson's Bay Company's post, and a considerable settlement. Some fifteen miles from the mouth of the Spokan, and sixty from Kettle Falls, was located the Cimakain--or Rev.

Messrs. Walker and Eells'--Mission. About sixty miles in a southeasterly direction is the Coeur d'Alene Italian Jesuit Mission.

Turning to the north, east, and southeast, we enter the gold and silver mountains of the Pacific Slope; this range is cut through by the Snake River, or south branch of the Columbia. Millions of dollars' worth of treasure is taken out of the mines within these desolate and barren-looking regions, and untold millions still await the miner's toil. The reader will remember that we are now traveling east. This range is, on the north of Snake River, called Salmon River Mountains, and on the south, the Blue Mountains; thence, on to the southern portions of Oregon, it joins the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges, bends to the west, and, near the forty-second parallel, runs into those vast promontories that jut into the Pacific Ocean.

Pa.s.sing through this range of Salmon River and Blue Mountains, which are not as high as the Cascade range, we descend into the great basin of the Rocky Mountains, which is intersected by high, broken ranges running east and west for about three hundred miles, to what is usually called the top of the Rocky Mountains, and the eastern boundary of this vast basin. The princ.i.p.al rivers which flow into and through this immense plain, are the Boise, Snake, Portneuf, Owyhee, and their tributaries. On the north is Clarke's or Flathead River, which runs northwest into the Columbia, near the northern boundary of the United States.

In all the northern portion of this great inland mountain plain there is an extensive placer and quartz mining country, besides numerous rich farming valleys, with an abundance of timber for all practical uses; most of the rough, rocky ranges of mountains being covered about half-way up their sides with timber, till you reach the open prairies along the main valley.

To the south, and along Snake River, are the high barren sage plains, extending from the Rocky Mountains on the east to the Blue Mountains on the west.

There are large tracts of arable land in the region just described, though to the weary traveler coming from the green plains of Kansas or the valley of the Wallamet, every thing looks forbidding and desolate, especially during the dry season. But remove the sage from any of these dry, barren places, and the rich bunch-gra.s.s takes its place. As well might the farmer expect his wheat to grow in a hemlock wood or cedar swamp, as for any thing but sage to grow on these plains till that is destroyed. Hence, from the experiments we have made on the soils of which we have been speaking, we are confident that the greater portion of the country now and for years past p.r.o.nounced barren and useless, will be found, with intelligent and proper cultivation, to rank among as good lands as any we have, and probably more desirable. As to timber, that must be cultivated till it becomes accustomed to the soil.

Cotton-wood is found in small quant.i.ties all over this plain, in the vicinity of streams and springs. The northeastern part of this basin is Montana; the southwestern is Idaho. The mineral wealth of this country, especially that of north Idaho and Montana, is inexhaustible. Gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, cinnabar, and tin, are found in abundance in these Territories, and in eastern and middle Oregon.

"_Owyhee Bullion._--John A. Post, internal revenue collector, furnishes the following _resume_ of the bullion product from January 1 to November 1, 1866, as a.s.sayed by different parties. The figures are greenback valuation:--

January $36,632 81 February 62,874 00 March 15,640 85 April 11,959 25 May 34,570 34 June 46,224 44 July 46,456 26 August 177,704 15 September 293,921 53 October 371,173 13 ------------- Total $1,073,256 78

"During the early part of the year, Mr. Post says, there was a great amount of treasure sent out in various shapes, of which he could get no account. To the foregoing must still be added the many tons of ruby, silver, polybasite, etc., shipped just as it came from the Poorman mine,--enough, at a rough estimate, to increase the total to fifteen hundred thousand, at least. It is safe to say that the product of the present year will be two millions, and that of next year go beyond five millions."[22]

[Footnote 22] From the _Oregonian_.

"_Treasure._--There has been shipped from this city during the past year, the sum of $8,070,600 in treasure. The amount pa.s.sing through private hands may be safely estimated at $3,000,000."[23]

[Footnote 23] From the _Portland Herald_.

We take the following from an official report to the Secretary of the Treasury, a copy of which has been sent to Congress:--

"From the best information available, the following is a near approximation to our total gold and silver product for the year ending January 7, 1867:--

California $25,000,000 Nevada 20,000,000 Montana 12,000,000 Idaho 6,500,000 Washington 1,000,000 Oregon 2,000,000 Colorado 2,500,000 New Mexico 500,000 Arizona 500,000 Add for bullion derived from unknown sources within the States and Territories, unaccounted for by a.s.sessors and express companies, etc. 5,000,000 ----------- Total product of the United States $75,000,000

"The bullion product of Washington is estimated by the surveyor-general at $1,500,000. That of Oregon is estimated at $2,500,000. Intelligent residents of Idaho and Montana represent that the figures given in the above estimate, so far as these Territories are concerned, are entirely too low, and might be doubled without exceeding the truth. The product of Idaho alone, for this year, is said to be $15,000,000 to $18,000,000. That of Montana is estimated by the surveyor-general at $20,000,000. Similar exceptions are taken to the estimates of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona."